Lynette Moey Yu Lin, CEO of Bayer Vietnam, faces a fine of up to 70 million dong (about $3,000) over a map of the South China Sea she included in a document about the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, Bloomberg reports.
According to the media outlet, the map in question reflected China's sovereignty claims in the region within the so called "nine-dash line" - claims that a number of countries, including Vietnam dispute.
In response, the Vietnamese government announced that Lin "violated Vietnam’s regulation banning the spread of 'illegal' information and images about Vietnam’s sovereignty through a personal email", as Bloomberg put it.
Bayer Vietnam already apologized for the incident, issuing a statement that said that the “sea reference” in question came from an internal document whose dissemination has since been halted.
China claims sovereignty over large swathes of the South China Sea, despite several other countries, such as Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, also claiming various areas there.
Beijing's stance is also being contested by the United States which has no territorial claims in the region but argues that China is restricting shipping in the South China Sea.
In 2016, a Hague-based arbitration tribunal ruled that there was no legal basis for China to claim rights over regions falling within the “nine-dash line”, though Beijing refused to recognize the verdict and demanded that the dispute be resolved through multilateral negotiations.
